..to my site. Not one full of fripperies, blinkies and
flash, but a nuts-and-bolts industrial strength art showcase I hope you
will enjoy.

Photo by Amid Amidi

I've been cartooning professionally since 1980, but
this site is not designed as a trudge down Memory Lane; I am focusing on
new work, which I think is my finest. Those friends whom want to pick up
data on the bad old days will find some here as well.

JUST WHO AM I ANYWAY?

Born in 1962 in Mineola, N.Y. Started drawing, painting,
creating my own attempts at comic books and animation at age two. Always
enthused about drawing and creating characters, so much that it became
a life force.I've never formed a barrier between fine art and cartooning.
The art of expression was always the most important one to me, and growing
up, I treasured Chinese watercolors, Breugel, Charlie Brown and Terrytoons
equally. My very young childhood was during the era of "pop art", when
fine artists were freely inspired by comics and other popular culture;
I remember being captivated by these works during trips to museums and
galleries in New York.

Clipped from Newsday, 4/21/67: One of "a dozen
4-to-5-year-olds taken to an avant-garde exhibit of Japanese geometric
paintings [at the Emily Lowe Gallery in Hempstead, N.Y.], and then let
loose with their own brushes and paints...Modern art is no more unreal
to children, they say, than the cotton candy, cutsie-pie fare that makes
up the general run of children's entertainment today."

Graduated from BOCES Cultural Arts Center (Syosset, N.Y.),
then took a few college classes in art while beginning a freelance art
and writing career.Left home at eighteen, ekeing out what some would call
a semi-living at my crafts while enjoying a lovely semi-homeless existence
on Manhattan's waterfront. Finally landed in a Brooklyn brownstone where
I spent seven waterbuggy years.Did everything I could, I wasn't particular. Wrote and
drew comic books and comic strips for magazines and small newspapers, illustrated,
designed record covers, posters, candy and T-shirts, and exhibited paintings
when I could. Spent the 1980's on the outskirts of the "radical art scene"
of the East Village. A challenging time, if not always a happy one.

(To see a flyer for a cartoonists' event from this
period, click here.)

Labor on Ninja Turtles comics allowed me to get up a grubstake
to come to the West Coast in 1991, lured by prospects of a more healthful
existence. Lived through a riot and a few earthquakes while working in
animation as a designer, animator, and breaking in as a director thanks
to my good friend Felix the Cat.To retain my sanity (HA),
I work on a stream of independent projects, which include those of a literary
nature, and a ten-minute animated film, done solo and now in the ink and
paint stage.My interest in every type of art I make is not in recapturing
or approximating reality, but in creating new forms and abstractions and
giving them their own unique life.

To believe in the unrealTo accept what it may do

To list my interests and inspirations is difficult. People
have been startled by the range of art books on my shelf. Instead of zeroing
in on a few favorites, I choose to ask myself what I think is boring, and
then ask myself why, being determined to learn something from everything.
Some people have complained that this is a fault. That this deters one
from having a "style", that I try too many different approaches, and that
my work is therefore overwhelming and confusing. I feel that the concept
of "style" has been abused as of late, that too many artists put the search
for a highly recognizable and highly limited vocabulary of hieroglyphics
before content and heart. This tends to not only date one, but also make
one highly imitatable, and therefore expendable.Art springs first from an observation of life, then a
philosophy from the heart and mind of the artist. And it must be honest
to be truly worthwhile.

I had been painting virtually since birth, and exhibited
a few works in a New York gallery in 1989. But it wasn't until ten years
after that I was able to discover my preferred medium (acrylic), technique
and "voice". I have been exhibiting paintings in various venues since 2000,
and occasionally sell them.

My first loves were animation and comics; but I drew to the
latter because they offered a far more instant gratification. Most comic
artists have interests rooted in film, and we work hard to approximate
filmic effects on the page.My first pro work was writing scripts for Harvey's Richie
Rich. The work paid eight dollars a page; when I found better conditions
illustrating for Marvel's Crazy magazine, I started branching out, eventually
steering toward independent publishers for more complete freedom.The comics I like to do are neither superhero sagas or
artistic post-nuclear angstfests. Following the classic style, they tell
stories of humor... and drama...for entertainment's sake. (A form which,
in my opinion, is becoming a lost one.)Maintaining a humor comic in the independent market is
no easy task for its creator. No matter how 'independent' the market pretends
to be, it still remains a slave to the trends and tastes of the big fellas.
The humor books are always the last ones the publishers are willing to
promote and the first ones they will choose to cancel. In 1989, I tired
of the vicissitudes and left the market...until 2002.

Click for an INTERVIEW
centering on my comics work conducted in Spring '03.

Always a prime focus of interest, I had experimented with
animation (mostly using Super 8) throughout my younger life, but didn't
move in professionally until my L.A. relocation in 1991. (See resume
for details.)I'd honestly have to say that of all the phases of my
career, labor in animation studios has proven to be the most financially
rewarding and the least artistically. Even the shorts I directed were mauled
by other hands after my job was done. L.A.'s studio system is a committee
system, and the result is typically a spoiled broth.But the experience has taught me a lot, enriching every
form I work in. One result is CAPRICE,
TEEN OF TOMORROW; a solo ten-minute short that I've completely
animated. One half is inked, and, at present, one-and-a half minutes are
shot and in color. Now...the quest for capital!

You can believe it or
not, but ever since I was a kid (late 1960s) I wanted to do 'adult' cartoons.
It was early viewings of cocktail napkins, Jimmy Hatlo comics, andthe
subtly voluptuous women of Jack Hamm's cartooning manuals that did it.
I wanted to be the boss chasing the secretary around the desk!(Discovering underground
comix...at a Manhattan news stand, at age seven, was a truly magical moment.
I didn't notice the smut; here were comics that looked like cartoons (!)
as opposed to the Archie and Gold Key diet that kept my aesthetic heart
barely beating.)A girlfriend, upon
seeing an erotic cartoon I did in my late teens, opined that this was a
form I should never abandon; one more mature lady claimed that an exhibition
of my paintings gave her an orgasm! Whatever...I find this genre infinitely
exciting.This gallery will
be added to as items are done or found in The Vaults.

1984: Gave seminar on cartooning at School of Visual Arts
(N.Y.C.) as guest of teacher. Also gave private instruction in cartooning.1995: Lectured to Asian animation crew on procedures
of animation (Film Roman Studio)2000: Instructed children in film animation at Animation
Creations. (Sherman Oaks)